“Dad, can we have lunch?”
“Hmm?”
“Lunch,” Tam repeated. “It’s three o’clock.”
Shit. More fuck ups. I glanced at Jude. He hadn’t looked my way since we’d left the amphibians hours ago, and it was killing me.
I grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop his aimless amble. “The kids need to eat. There’s a burger place they love near my house. Will you come?”
Slowly, Jude, turned his head. “Come where?”
“For lunch. To the burger place near our house.”
“Then what?”
As if I had a clue.
Delilah came to my rescue. She tugged on Jude’s hand. “Please come. Then we can have movie night after and you can see how bad Daddy’s popcorn is.”
“It’s really bad,” Tam confirmed. “He always burns it. Mum says it smells like—”
“All right, all right.” Despite my desperation to keep Jude with us, I had no desire to inflict Mina’s colourful description of my habitual popcorn massacres on him. “Look—” I kept my gaze fixed on him—“we’d really like you to come, just for food, if you don’t fancy coming back to the house. Please?”
“Please?” Delilah echoed.
Jude’s frown softened a touch, and he groaned. “You lot are impossible with those big brown eyes. How good are the burgers?”
Tam bounced on his heels. “Epic. Dad ate two last time.”
“Did he now?”
“Yup.”
“Well okay then.” Jude treated me to a fleeting stare. “I’m sold.”
We left the zoo, Delilah still super-glued to Jude’s side while Tam walked with me. I slipped an arm around my son. It was rare that he had my undivided attention, and he never asked for it.
Delilah and Jude skipped ahead. I squeezed Tam’s slim shoulders. “All right?”
He nodded, lost in his own head as ever. “I like it when Jude is with us.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t check your emails.”
Burn. “Do you think I work too much?”
“Not like you used to, but I don’t see how you can ever have any fun when you’re always busy.”
“I’m not busy now.”
Tam smiled. “I know.”
We piled into the car. Jude sat in the back with Delilah, and I felt his presence behind me like an unexploded bomb. He seemed happy enough, and he hadn’t gone home, but the disquiet, caused as ever by my inability to explain myself without being a thoughtless twat, lingered. I’d meant it when I’d told him that seeing him with Delilah fucked me up, but I’d forgotten to add that I loved it. That I loved him. And now the only thing in the world that would make me wish precious time with my children away was the chance to put that right.
* * *
Jude
